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This week’s nacho review comes to you from Bugaboo CreekMiller’s Ale House, conveniently located next to the Arsenal Mall in scenic Watertown. In an area that truly lacks tacky sports bars, Miller’s is a welcome change from the moose restaurant . The menu may be reminiscent of Friday’s, but the waitstaff is friendly, the drinks are fell-off-the-back-of-the-truck cheap, and the dining room is still shiny and new. We look forward to returning soon for our 1st Annual Classy –> Divey Western Ave Pub Crawl, starting at Miller’s Ale House, moving to the Boyne, and ending at the Bus Stop.

To punish ourselves for not eating nachos recently, we decided to indulge in two nachos: The Fiesta Nachos and the Zinger® Potato Chip Nachos (because nachos with a registered trademark are not weird at all). Just so you know, they also have something called the Chicken Enormous Nachos, but adding that to our tab would likely have killed us.

Appearance: (4) The overall theme of this review is “meh,” starting with appearance, which was–unsurprisingly–meh. We got chili on the side in deference to our vegetarian friend, but we suspect leaving it on would have done little to make these nachos exciting. Average corn chips, scant cheese melted and congealed until nearly solid, and typical pico and jalapenos. The only mark of distinction was the taco season sprinkled on the ball of sour cream. Nice choice–almost made sour cream bearable.

Quality of Ingredients: (6) The only thing worth mentioning on this plate was the beef, which despite being ugly, was delicious. It nicely complimented the taco seasoning on the sour cream. Is it sad that’s the highlight? Cheese, chips, pico, and jalepenos were otherwise unremarkable.

Distribution of Toppings: (5) We suspect someone in the kitchen was saving all the cheese for the Potato Chip and Chicken Enormous nachos, favoring the big brothers over the scrawny runt, the Fiesta. The sprinkling of cheese we did receive chilled too quickly, leaving us with a pile of naked chips and cheese we had to tear apart with our fingers. Chili-on might have helped, but there is no way to get around the fact that there wasn’t enough cheese.

We should start this by saying we still have no idea what a Zinger® is. We thought they were boneless chicken wings, but either they forgot our sauce or it somehow soaked into the breading during the walk from the kitchen to the table. As best we can tell a Zinger® is a chicken finger with some stuff on it–in the menu photos, said “stuff” glistens. In real life it doesn’t exist.

Appearance: (7) Quite mouthwatering when compared with the Fiesta ‘chos, but rather monotonous on its own. We appreciated the lava-flow of cheese cascading into the chips, and the splash of color provided by the tomatoes and onions helped to ameliorate our concerns over the glistening grease of the chips.

Quality: (4) A lot of problems and only a few compliments. We appreciated the attempt at thick-cut homemade chips. The ones un-soggied by cheese grease were delicious, but once they were even slightly moistened they ended up grainy and unpleasant. The Zingers® were equally unimpressive–maybe we should have chosen a more flavorful sauce (we elected to mix “medium” and “garlic”), but they just tasted like breaded chicken fingers. Overall, the plate was greasy and probably life-shortening.

Distribution: (6) When it comes to potato chips, there’s a fine line between too little cheese and too much. In Miller’s case, they went a little overboard and we ended up with a greasy mess of off-textured chips and an iceberg of solidified cheese. Again, the cheese congealed too quickly and was sliding off the chips. We could have used more Zinger® as well.

Price: (6) At ~$10, these weren’t outlandish.

Overall: 23/40. We’ve had much better potato chip nachos closer to home at John Harvard’s and Orleans (and even as far away as Denver), without having to figure out how to incorporate a pesky ® symbol into a blog post.

2 Responses to “Miller’s Ale House (Boston): Mediocrity®”

recently had the chicken enormous nachos. first off i’ll say I agree with everything else you said about the restaurant, service, drinks, nice dining room etc. the nachos were the worst I can remember not including sporting event nachos or something that clearly would be inferior. let me begin, there was barely any cheese and what was there was overcooked and congealed on like someone microwaved them for 45 minutes. the chicken was breast meat, chunky and quite dry, but not canned. the sour cream was plentiful, that was a highlight, the salsa was subpar, and I made a point to taste it separately. the jalapenos were obviously wholesale purchased in a 60 ounce can or something, you could just tell, basically the cheapest stock jalapenos available. cant remember anything else, don’t care to remember anything else. other food items were not as bad, my mom got lobster bisque and my bro got cheeseburger.

Thanks for the update. We get super depressed when we hear that formerly-decent nachos have suddenly gone downhill. Maybe they took our review to heart and cut down on the cheese (which would be a travesty! I mean, cheese. AmIright?). And yes, it is a rare restaurant that doesn’t use canned salsa and jalepenos.

I would definitely go back with friends for the cheap drinks, but beyond that it kind of sucks. Watertown deserves better!